Nojeee

I remember Chips well ... I used to go in and slyly make sure any copies of Jet Boot Jack were at the front ?. Happy days ......

I think Multiboot might be well past its prime now . There are many new and faster alternatives available. I'm still surprised how far it spread from the handful of people I gave copies to in the 1980's. Jon PS: It's fun spotting Multiboot 'clones' where my original text has been changed .

Hi Jason, I've been taking a peek at the High Score Club posts regarding Berks 4 and I thought I'd take the opportunity to clarify the way the score and percentage completion works. I wanted to retain the feel of the original Berks 3 game so the Berks and Drones respawn when you revisit a room. This was done to keep the game busy while exploring but does make it possible to 'farm' enemies to get a high score. I decided to add the Percentage Complete feature for players who wanted an additional challenge. The Percentage Complete value is purely based on the number of shoot-away blocks completely removed (any remaining blocks can be seen on the map). Getting 100% completion does make the game much more difficult as you end up removing blocks that act as protection from Drones ... and the dreaded Snakes. It's really rewarding to see the game being played in this way. I'm sure it will also affect the way I approach the scoring systems on future games . Jon PS: I've read through the Jet Boot Jack thread and I'm amazed at the scores players achieved!

I know It's always tricky getting the difficulty level right. I had a few comments that my previous games were too easy so I tried to make World 4 hard (but possible after lots of practice). I played the game a lot during testing and made sure that I could complete all of the Worlds - World 4 was definitely the hardest. If you do continue to have trouble completing the game drop me a PM ... I may be able to help. ...

Thanks for all of the kind comments. They're much appreciated and make it all worthwhile. Georgina is one of my daughters ... if you keep playing you may spot the other one

That's still pretty much the plan ... I think I might sleep before doing all of that rather than after

Phew! That's a relief ... thanks for letting me know.

That's strange ... I don't have any XL hardware but I've tested the ATR on Altirra in that mode. Have you created a physical disk or are you using SIO2PC? Maybe somebody else could check it on an 800XL?

I'm glad you've enjoyed it so far. The first two Worlds are intended to be 'training grounds' leading up to the original Berks 3 layout and then World 4. I'll be interested to hear if you think World 4 is easy or hard

Last year I converted two of my C16 games to the Atari - Baby Berks and Major Blink. I decided to follow this up by writing an enhanced version of another C16 game, Berks 3. After a few months it became clear that the game would be more than an improved conversion so it is now Berks Four. The game grew so much that needs a 64K machine to run on. The original game contained a grid of rooms that the player explored looking for keys to gain access to the final Crystal. This new incarnation has four Worlds with the Berks 3 layout (of 6 by 5 rooms) forming World 3. The four Worlds increase in size from the new 4 by 4 and 5 by 5 rooms up to World 4 which has a 6 by 6 room layout. The largest World is split into 3 zones, each with a Puzzle Room that needs completing to gain access to the 'Final Chamber'. The main reason to write the game was to see if I could get a retro-rush working on my code from 1985. I wanted to keep the style consistent with the original so there are no apologies for the old school nature of the game. There's no fancy music driver and the sound effects are very 1980's. However, it's been great fun getting back into Atari programming after so long. Development has been made much easier by the wonderful WUDSN and Altirra utilities - rather different from using Synassembler on my Atari 800 and sending the code across to the C16 via the joystick ports I've put some basic notes together in the Berks 4 Notes.doc file and this contains a few hints to help along the way. I've been playing the game for a good few weeks now and it does appear to be stable (famous last words?). I can complete Worlds 1 to 3 easily but World 4 is definitely hard! Finally, the game uses all of the available 64K of memory and needs a 2-stage load to get everything into place. I've tested the bootable ATR disk on my 130XE and it runs fine. I'd be interested to hear if it runs ok from any of the cartridge utilities. Please let me know if you spot any major problems. I hope you enjoy the game ....... Jon BERKS4.ATR Berks 4 Notes.doc

Thanks for the suggestion. I did a fair amount of cartridge based games on the NES and SNES but have never looked at this for the Atari. My problem is that the game has grown so much that I'm using (and reusing) all of the RAM including the space available under the ROMs. There's a lot of swapping around of data in order to get everything in the right place at the right time and I'd be concerned that trying to rework this for a cartridge model would take too long. I'll certainly take a look back on some threads about Atari cartridge based games though. PS: Jet Boot Jack .... ah, the memories

Almost there I started off with the intention of converting Berks 3 to the Atari and adding a few enhancements to make it Berks 3+. However, it just kept growing so it's now Berks Four. The new game has 4 'Worlds' with the original Berks 3 game effectively being World 3. I've deliberately programmed Berks Four in the same style as the original so I hope it's not too retro for people. I'm hoping to upload in a week or two ... unless anything nasty crops up in testing. PS: The game will need 64K to run and I'm still scratching around trying to find a few more bytes for the final tweaks!

I was asked some time ago if I could upload my source files for Multiboot and I can't remember ever getting around to it. About a year ago I extracted all (well, most) of the source files from my old 1980's Atari floppies. I then wrote a program to convert the tokenised Synassembler files to new fangled, modern format so they could be assembled using MADS and WUDSN. Multiboot was one of the programs I managed to resurrect and it even assembles correctly! I have to say that I winced when looking back on some of the code! In my defence, it was very early in my programming career and only intended for personal use - Multiboot spread around after I gave out a few copies. I've added some comments to the source files and you'll spot many more caveats and disclaimers Thanks, Jon Multiboot_XL_Atari.asm Multiboot_Saver.asm

I updated today and all is looking good. I use WUDSN daily so it's great to know that it's actively being developed. There are so many useful improvements; for example, I often forget to 'Save All' before assembling so the addition of the automatic save is really helpful. I may no longer be pulling out my hair so much ... there's not a lot left! Once again, thanks for all of the hard work. Jon

Thanks for all of the input. Since my original post I've been working on straight forward single-load conversions of my older games and saving game states hasn't been necessary. The conversion I'm currently working on will have passwords to allow level skipping as that seemed a simpler solution. I'm still contemplating a few new ideas that would need sector loading but that's for another time Regards, Jon

Yes, it was me .. honest It's great to hear that people had fun playing the games back in the day ... the C16 / Plus 4 was a very underrated machine. The Major Blink and Baby Berks conversions were quick ports just to get me back into 6502 coding after so many years working on modern consoles. The hardware differences between the Atari and C16 made some things difficult to transfer but I'm hoping it sill provided some enjoyment. I'm now working on a greatly expanded conversion of Berks 3 for the A8 which should be completed in a month or two. The game will no doubt still be difficult but there are a few added features that will help. Finally, just to be perverse, I'm hoping to convert the final A8 Berks 3 conversion back to the Plus 4! Regards, Jon

I'm not too sure how that could work as control passes back to the main boot routine as soon as a game is loaded. There could certainly be multi part games if each was standalone ... for example, side A and side B of a disk or cassette. It would be interesting to hear if anybody did find ways around the default loading.

Multiboot was written back when the 810 was the only floppy drive available and copy protection was a rarity. I sported the obligatory droopy moustache and shoulder length hair in those days :-) When you import a game from disk or cassette it is loaded into memory and saved to the next available free sectors on the floppy. The 'directory' simply keeps track of starting sector and sector count along with the game name. When you boot a game directly from a Multiboot disk it's loaded to the correct memory location and control passes to it as if it was booted from the original disk. If the game runs from Multiboot itself then it should work if you create a bootable disk using the menu option (you need a blank formatted floppy). A few things could cause problems; if the game disk or cassette is protected or has multiple loads ... or if it overwrites the Multiboot code which starts at $8700. Not sure if that helps? Jon

Many thanks for the update. I've been using FontMaker most days since returning to my A8 roots earlier in the year. It's a nice and easy way to get character sets into my projects.

The game came about while I was thinking of ways to write something 'different' that would fit in 16K and work with the limitations of the C16. Berks 1 had effectively been based around a main player and enemies that fitted within a 2 by 2 character matrix and Major Blink evolved from that. I think I had the basic game up and running within a week with just the main 'player' and the Diamonds. I felt it needed something more and the Bears were born - they proved really effective in making the player revisit areas and added some humour. I don't remember being influenced by any game in particular but I probably was . The reason for the move to the C16 / Plus 4 was simple ... money . The market was quiet at the time and I was asked by CRL if I could do a quick game for the C16. I didn't earn much but the three games did manage to keep me going for a few months. The beauty of the C16 was that you could turn out a game in 4 or 5 weeks and make good use of it's ability to display colourful gameplay. I ended up writing 5 C16 games plus the Baby Berks type-in program (which later became a budget title). I didn't think of it as a step backwards - simply a different challenge. It certainly helped keep me going until things improved in the market. Following the C16 games I moved back to the C64 and then onto NES and SNES. I'm still very fond of the good old Plus/4.

The only reason the follow up Jet Boot Jack game didn't make it to the A8 was the decline of the Atari games market in the UK. At that time I was a freelance programmer trying to make a living from writing games; it's a sad fact that Commodore dominated the market so the game only made it to the C64 - it could certainly have been adapted to work on the A8. I was never happy with a few areas of Jet Boot Jack 2 so wouldn't port the game as it is. However, I do hope to revisit it soon and create a new game that would include some elements of the original.

I really appreciate the kind comments - it's nice to see the Berks games getting a second lease of life. That's a very fair point. I find it difficult to set the right level of difficulty ... if you excuse the pun . There's a balance between making it too easy so people can't be bothered to play until it gets challenging and making it too hard which makes people get frustrated and put it down. When you get to skill level 16 on Major Blink there are 6 Bears and 6 Diamonds which chase at a pretty fast speed. However, after lots of practice I found I could often complete the screens at that level so the game does silently increase the Diamond's speed a few times more. The Plus/4 was a really nice machine but it's true that the TED chip seems prone to failure. When I powered on my own Plus/4 after it had been in store for many years it had failed. Luckily, I managed to get an 'untested' one on eBay without any power supply and it surprisingly worked first time. Fully working ones are going for silly money at the moment. The first Berks game was very similar to Baby Berks with multiple single screens to clear. NB. Major Blink was initially intended to be a stand alone game but the publisher wanted to add the Berks 2 tag line. Berks 3 was an expanded version of Berks 1 and allowed the player to move from screen to screen in search of keys to open the final 'gates' (a bit like good old Shamus on the A8). The game only just squeezed into 16K; when I checked recently it had 10 bytes free . I was considering porting it to the A8 but think it might be better to use it as the basis of a larger, improved version. I hope, one way or another, that Berks 3 will make it's way to the A8 sometime.

I'm not too sure what to do next. I converted the two games mainly to get back into the swing of 6502 coding - I was pleasantly surprised how it all came flooding back. I was thinking about Berks 3 but might want to expand it from the 16K limitation ... maybe Berks 3+ or even Berks 4 if it was enhanced enough.

Thanks for the kind words. I didn't consciously write the game in a U.S. style although I'm sure all of the great games around at the time had an influence on me. I visited English Software a few times in Manchester but mainly to hassle for payment . It was about a 10 hour round trip and I'd go up and back in a very long day! All demos and updates were sent by post and very few failed to get there. Interestingly, many years later while working on PS1 games we would FedEx builds to Disney in LA as transferring by modem took so long and was so unreliable. Things are certainly different now. I really wish that was me playing Cavatina (one of my favourite pieces) ... I did go on to write the Star Wars theme though .

I recently ported my old Baby Berks C16 game to the A8 and uploaded it on the forum. Baby Berks was originally a cut down version of Berks 1 - initially created to be typed in from a magazine listing. I've now converted the second game in the Berks Trilogy ... Major Blink. The game dates from1985 and I haven't made any major (excuse the pun) updates to the gameplay. The original program had to run in 16K and this version should happily run in 32K. I've tested it on my PAL 130XE and in NTSC & PAL in Altirra. The game makes a few simple changes to compensate for the different NTSC frame rate but I haven't been able to test this on real hardware. The game is a simple one; roam around the screen filling in the boxes while avoiding Diamond Geezers and Cool Bears (don't ask). There are eight different screen layouts chosen at random - repeating when they've all been cleared. Larger boxes contain a random bonus based on your entry skill setting. Fill in the box to gain the bonus. The Cool Bears appear at the top of the screen and work their way down, un-filling squares as they move. Diamonds inexorably move towards you but can be 'stunned' for a short while before setting off again. It's important to note that you must complete a screen before the bonus counter reaches zero or it's Game Over! You can select a skill rating on the title page and this determines your entry position in a skill range of 1 to 16. The game gradually gets more difficult as you progress through the skill levels. The skill level increases by one for every screen completed and you gain an extra life for every four screens completed. High-Scores are kept for each of the five entry skill ratings - this is to counter somebody starting at the lowest skill level to gain extra lives. Major Blink moves along the lanes in the chosen direction but if you release the joystick it will continue moving to a crossroads before stopping. You can reverse his direction at any time while he is moving. Cool Bears randomly choose a lane to start from but will not regenerate while you're in the top 'green zone'. Pressing the Space Bar will pause or un-pause the game. There are a few tactics that will help you complete screens successfully but I'll leave that for you to work out. Changing direction takes a bit of practice so a good joystick is advisable. Finally, the game is very much 'old school' and may not appeal to everyone. I make no apologies for the limited and repetitive sound effects - you may need to keep the volume low before you go ga-ga like I have over the past few weeks. Jon PS. Please let me know if you find any serious issues. MajorBlink.xex